Archaeomagnetism of four pottery kilns in central Portugal: Implications for secular variation and dating

Submitted: 3 April 2017
Accepted: 31 August 2017
Published: 1 October 2018
Abstract Views: 711
PDF: 465
Publisher's note
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Authors

We report archaeomagnetic results from four pottery kilns in Portugal which are thought to belong to the period of Roman rule (3rd Century BCE-4th Century CE). Very few details have been published to date, so this broad assignment is based on the general archaeological context at each site. Our motivation was to see if a more precise chronology could be established by means of archaeomagnetic dating. Concomitant goals were to compare these results from Portugal to their counterparts in Spain and to expand geographic coverage of the regional geomagnetic secular variation reference curve. Experimentally, all the samples behaved in a very coherent manner during progressive alternating-field demagnetization and yielded high-precision mean archaeomagnetic directions (a95<3°) for each site. The results suggest that two of the kilns, Castelo de Vide and Peniche, were most likely in use during the late 1st/early 2nd centuries CE, whereas the two kilns at Seixal are somewhat younger, dating to the late 2nd to early 4th centuries CE.

Dimensions

Altmetric

PlumX Metrics

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Citations

Supporting Agencies

Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and the Geophysical Centre of the University of Évora.

How to Cite

Evans, M. E., & Correia, A. (2018). Archaeomagnetism of four pottery kilns in central Portugal: Implications for secular variation and dating. Open Journal of Archaeometry, 4(1). https://doi.org/10.4081/arc.2018.7171